Online Reviews: 2 Reasons They Are So Important in Today’s Internet-Driven World

Did you know that nearly 85 percent of American adults utilize the internet? Today’s world is driven by the internet, which is why it is critical that your business understand why online reviews are so important to its overall success, and the importance of online reputation management for your company. Here are two clear reasons why reviews matter:

Nearly 70 percent of consumers put their trust in the opinions that they read online.

Some people think, “I read it online, so it has to be true.” While some may laugh at such a bizarre statement, there is actually truth behind it, according to statistics. Everywhere you go online, from Google to Yelp to Facebook, you will find a large amount of people sharing their opinions on local businesses (just like yours) and plenty of others looking for opinions. These opinions matter because some of them are going to be positive and some are going to be negative. Therefore, these opinions are going to positively and negatively impact your business.

Customers tend to share poor experiences online before they share positive ones.

While you would hope that a happy customer would head straight to the internet to share their positive experience at your business, this likely won’t happen. More often than not, you won’t get an online review unless a customer has had a negative experience with your business. They do this in order to release some of their frustration. After all, you know how it feels to let some of that anger out when you feel that you have been wronged in some way. Plus, it may save someone else from having to go through a similar situation.

The important thing for you to take away from this is that you take the time to insist on your happy customers to leave a positive review for your business. Let them know how appreciative you would be if they would take the time to do this. That way, if you do have a negative review at some point, those positive reviews will help to outweigh those negative ones.